THE PEARS OF NEW YORK 233 



ables. They are small or of but medium size, with straggling, wayward 

 tops with habits of growth so self assertive that no art nor skill of the 

 pruner can bring the branches under control. The limbs are always crooked ; 

 some bend inward toward the main stem, some are upright, some droop, 

 and no two behave in quite the same way. Notwithstanding the illy- 

 shaped tops, the trees are often enormously productive so that the crop 

 usually requires thinning. They bear almost annually; come in bearing 

 young; are fairly hardy; and are adapted to almost any soil or situation 

 provided, only, that the soil is fertile or well fertilized. They are as nearly 

 immune to blight as those of any other European pear. The trees are 

 characterized by two marked peculiarities: the old wood is thickly set 

 with small, short spurs; and they are about the latest of all their kind in 

 leafing out in the spring. There is no better winter pear for either the 

 commercial pear-grower or the amateur, and the variety grows especially 

 well in New York. 



Winter Nelis was raised from seed by Jean Charles Nelis, Mechlin, 

 Belgium, early in the nineteenth century. It was introduced into England 

 by the London Horticultural Society under the name La Bonne Mali- 

 noise. Subsequently this name was cancelled and that of Winter Nelis 

 adopted, the name which had been given the variety by Van Mons in honor 

 of the originator. In 1823, Thomas Andrew Knight, President of the 

 London Horticultural Society, sent cions of the variety to John Lowell, 

 Roxbury, Massachusetts, who, in his turn, shared them with Robert 

 Manning, Salem, Massachusetts, whence the sort was very generally 

 disseminated in this country and attained great popularity. At the 

 National Convention of Fruit-Growers held in New York in 1848, Winter 

 Nelis was included in a short list of pears recommended for general culti- 

 vation. For more than half a century the name has appeared in the fruit- 

 catalogs of the American Pomological Society. 



Tree medium in size and vigor, spreading, hardy, very productive; trunk stocky; 

 branches thick, zigzag, reddish-brown mingled with gray scarf-skin, marked with small 

 lenticels; branchlets with short internodes, reddish-brown, dull, smooth, glabrous, with 

 numerous raised, conspicuous lenticels. 



Leaf-buds medium to large, long, conical or pointed, free. Leaves 3 in. long, i\ in. 

 wide, elongated-oval, leathery; apex taper-pointed; margin varies from crenate to serrate; 

 petiole 1 5 in. long, slender. Flower-buds conical or pointed, free; flowers open late, if 

 in. across, 6 or 7 buds in a cluster; pedicels § in. long, rather slender, lightly pubescent, 

 greenish. 



Fruit ripe late November to early January; medium in size, 2j in. long, about 2 \ in. 



